Special Education

episode 1

episode 2

Factors driving the growth of online proctoring

Factors driving the growth of online proctoring 

 Factors such as the rise in demand for e-learning platforms, reduction in high costs of proctored assessment centers, and reduction in time and money of learners are driving the growth of the online exam proctoring market during the forecast period.

 

  1. Remote learning and testing: The widespread adoption of remote learning and online education due to factors like the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the demand for secure online testing solutions.

 

2. Accessibility and Convenience: Online proctoring provides a convenient and accessible way for individuals to take exams from the comfort of their own homes, eliminating the need for physical test centers.

3.Global Research: It allows institutions to reach a global audience without the logistical challenges of coordinating physical test centers in different locations.

4.Cost- Efficiency:  Online proctoring can be cost-effective for both institutions and test takers compared tradition in-person proctoring methods.

 Click on the following for more information:

growth of online proctoring

The integrity of online exams

How to you ensure academic integrity and prevent cheating in online exams?

Online exams are a convenient and flexible way to assess your learners' progress and mastery of the course content. However, they also pose some challenges for ensuring academic integrity and preventing cheating. How can you design and deliver online exams that are fair, valid, and secure? Here are some tips and best practices to help you.

Share your insights alongside other invited experts

Scroll to add your perspective to any article section

Choose the right format

Depending on your learning objectives and outcomes, you may want to use different types of online exam formats, such as multiple choice, short answer, essay, or project. Each format has its own advantages and disadvantages for measuring and evaluating your learners' knowledge and skills. For example, multiple choice questions are easy to grade and can test factual recall, but they may also encourage guessing and memorization. Essay questions can assess higher-order thinking and writing skills, but they may also be more time-consuming and subjective to grade. Project-based exams can showcase your learners' creativity and application of concepts, but they may also require more resources and collaboration. Choose the format that best suits your purpose and aligns with your course content and expectations.

Set clear expectations and guidelines

One of the most important steps to ensure academic integrity and prevent cheating in online exams is to communicate clearly and consistently with your learners about what is expected of them and what is allowed and not allowed during the exam. You should provide them with detailed information about the exam format, duration, content, grading criteria, and policies regarding plagiarism, collaboration, and academic misconduct. You should also explain the consequences of violating these policies and the procedures for reporting and resolving any issues. You should also remind your learners of the importance and benefits of academic honesty and integrity for their own learning and development.

Use technology wisely

Technology can be a double-edged sword when it comes to online exams, as it can both enable efficient and effective delivery of exams, as well as create opportunities for cheating. To use technology wisely, you should consider using a secure and reliable online exam platform that can prevent unauthorized access and detect plagiarism or cheating. Additionally, randomization and variation techniques can be used to reduce the chances of copying or sharing answers. Additionally, setting time limits and deadlines creates a sense of urgency and accountability for learners, while proctoring services or software can verify identity and observe behavior. Finally, data and analytics can be used to track and analyze performance, patterns, and anomalies to identify potential red flags or issues.

• 
  

Provide feedback and support

Finally, you should provide your learners with timely and constructive feedback and support after the exam. You should share the exam results, grades, and comments with your learners as soon as possible, and explain how they can improve their learning and performance. You should also encourage your learners to reflect on their own strengths and weaknesses, and to seek help or guidance if they need it. You should also solicit feedback from your learners about their experience and satisfaction with the online exam, and use it to improve your future online exam design and delivery.

Plagiarism detection

Plagiarism detectionPlagiarism detection in f online assessment proctoring

 

What is Plagiarism?

 

 

Actually, it’s very hard to give an extract definition for the word plagiarism but According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, the simple meaning for plagiarism is “To use the words or ideas of another person as if they were your own words or ideas”. Plagiarism also includes:

1. Turning in someone Else’s work as your own.
2. Copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit.
3. Failing to put quotations in quotation marks.
4. Giving incorrect information about the source of the quotation.
5. Changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit.
6. Copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not.

There are two main classes of methods used to reduce plagiarism.

1. Plagiarism Prevention :
   Punishment routines and plagiarism drawback explanation procedures. Require a long time to implement. But have a long-term positive effect.
2. Plagiarism Detection :
   Include manual methods and software tool. Easy to implement, but have a momentary positive effect.

Plagiarism Detection

Plagiarism detection can be done manually or using an automated process. The automated process is very similar to natural language processing, visual identification, and biometric process. All of these have a foundation for pattern recognition. Automated process doesn’t give 100% accuracy. so the manual checking is still needed.

Internal Plagiarism Detection

Finding plagiarized passages within a document without access to potential original text. Also called Intrinsic plagiarism detection.

External Plagiarism Detection

External plagiarism detection consists of comparing suspicious plagiarized documents against potential original documents.

Plagiarism Detection in source code

Detecting Plagiarism in source code is relatively easy than natural language plagiarism detection. Because there is neither ambiguity nor interference between words in programming languages. But in natural language, every word may have many synonyms and different meanings. Some plagiarism detection methods are language independent and some are language-dependent.

Plagiarism Detection in natural language

Detecting plagiarism in written documents. this method can divide into two categories which are called language-independent plagiarism detection and language-dependent plagiarism detection.

Language-Independent Plagiarism Detection

Language independent methods are based on evaluating text characteristics that are common to all languages. Such as the number of special characters and the average length of a sentence. Paraphrasing techniques can be used to mislead the language-independent systems.

Language Dependent Plagiarism Detection

These methods are based on evaluating text characteristics that are specific to one language. Such as counting the frequency of a special word in a particular language. Language dependent plagiarism detection is more effective than language-independent plagiarism detection.

Stylometry — based methods

Stylometry is a statistical approach used for authorship attribution. These are inspired by authorship attribution methods and consist basically of classifying writing styles of authors to identify similarity. It is based on the assumption that every author has a unique style. The writing style can be analyzed by using factors within the same document, or by comparing two documents of the same author. This is performed by dividing the documents into parts like paragraphs and sentences. The style features are then extracted and analyzed. The main linguistic stylometric features are Text statistics which operate at the character level (number of commas, question marks, word lengths, etc).

• Syntactic features to measure writing style at the sentence level (sentence lengths, use of function words, etc.).
• Syntactic features to measure writing style at the sentence level (sentence lengths, use of function words, etc.).
• Closed-class word sets to count special words (number of stop words, foreign words, “difficult” words, etc.).
• Structural features that reflect text organization (paragraph lengths, chapter lengths, etc.).
• Using these features formulas can be derived to identify the writing style of an author. 
•  
•  Stylometry-based methods can be used in internal and external plagiarism detection.

The challenges and solutions of remote proctoring

 T Challenges and solutions of remote proctoring

 

What is Proctoring

Proctoring refers to the act of keeping an eye on the students to ensure that they don’t cheat while taking an online test and is also imperative for maintaining the academic integrity of educational institutions. Proctors ensure that students adhere to the rules and regulations of examination and that the exams are conducted in accordance with standards in different locations.

Proctors have the liberty to access audio, video, and screen of test takers, assess if their students are taking help from any web sources, warn students to not resort to unfair means, and also terminate the exams if required.

 

Proctoring Software 

Proctoring software is a technological invention that acts as an invigilator while students take online exams. It runs on a student’s devices and eliminates the chances of students resorting to unfair means by first verifying the test taker’s identity and also invigilating them throughout the examination process. This type of proctoring is represented by a cloud-based solution that integrates easily into a learning management system or a test platform.

There are various types of proctoring that come with customizable features thus leaving room for educational institutions to choose from.  The type of invigilation which the online proctoring software can undertake depends on the type of proctoring solutions that are available as a choice for educational institutions.

 

Challenges of proctoring software 

• Privacy concerns: Some of the remote proctoring software before permitting students to commence their online exams put forth demands of scanning the room where they are taking exams. This thus raises concerns for students who live with others in the same room as even they would appear in the scan video irrespective of their not consenting to the same. Apart from scanning the room, the software for verification requires students to submit a picture of their government IDs. This information which is held for a particular period exposes them to higher risk in case of the software being hacked by unauthorized hackers.

 

• Technical issues: Remote proctoring software is one of the best man-made technological inventions to maintain the integrity of online exams but all inventions are subject to facing technical glitches. The occurrence of these glitches, while students are in the midst of the exam, can hamper the credibility of the exam and thus devoid educational institutions of the assurance that students are being invigilated.

Key features and functionality of proctoring software

• Exam monitoring: Online remote proctoring software ensures continuous monitoring of student’s activities throughout the exam with its three-step process which consists of verification, real-time monitoring coupled with data storage and review. The proctor before allowing students to take the exam verifies the test taker’s identities and permits them to take the test post that. While the students are taking the exam, the software monitors them in real-time with the liberty of cancelling students’ tests after giving them multiple warnings. The role of the invigilator however depends on the type of proctor opted by the educational institutions. Adding a cherry on top, the software also analyses the results as soon as the students submit their exams. It not only reviews but also stores the audio and video data which can be referred to in case of any controversy.

 

• Facial recognition: To ensure that students do not resort to impersonation, the online remote proctoring software verifies their identities by comparing their images from their webcams with the image provided by the students in their authentication documents. Students can proceed with the process of online examination only after they cross this hurdle.

 

• Suspicious behavior detection:  Students nowadays have the option of taking online exams in the comfort of their homes but they cannot use unfair means to obtain higher marks due to the remote proctoring software that runs continuously while they take exams. The proctoring software accesses the videos and audio of the devices that are used by test takers to take the exam which enables it to detect their suspicious noise and background activities. Even if the test takers are referring to any book/study material from behind the computer’s screen, the proctoring successfully detects their eye movements.

 

• AI-Based algorithms: Online remote proctoring software comes with advanced-based algorithms such as improved face identification techniques coupled with machine learning which aids in confirming the authenticity of online exams. These algorithms reduce prejudice and human error which provides succinct, accurate results and successfully outperforms human proctors.

 

 Exams and schools have an inseparable relationship since both form a part of important components of an educational career of a person. This is because schools aid students in acquiring knowledge while exams help educational institutions to assess the extent to which the students have been able to process the same. Educational institutions used to conduct exams using traditional proctoring methods including pen-paper tests wherein students were required to physically mark their presence at examination centers and invigilators were required to keep an eye on the test takers to maintain academic integrity.

This entire setup was severely affected when CoVID brought everything to a standstill. The emergence of online exam software and remote proctoring software during these unprecedented times played a crucial role in not only ensuring continuity in the process of imparting knowledge but also in maintaining academic integrity. Its feature of authenticating the identities of online students also aided in maintaining the integrity of online courses provided by various platforms.

 

 

 

 

The evolving landscape of online assessment methods and technologies

 Evolving landscape of online assessment methods and technologies

 

 

Over the past several years most school districts have been compelled to implement online summative assessments. The challenges involved proved to be far more extensive than simply adding technology. The move to digital assessments has ushered in significant impacts on teaching and learning. Technology has rapidly emerged as an essential tool for planning, creating, delivering, and evaluating successful instruction. Today, online assessments are becoming standard and are used regularly, not only for summative or high stakes assessments, but also for ongoing formative measures of learning as well.

In this edWebinar, two school superintendents share how they are leading the drives to leverage the capabilities of online assessment as well as grow the capacities for online assessment within school environments. Nine specific recommendations for planning and implementing effective online assessment infrastructure and programs are reviewed. These recommendations help to ensure that the broader education community of students, teachers, parents, administrators and school board members will continue to benefit from the value of online assessments.